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Sahelanthropus tchadensis has been the object of some controversy for quite awhile. Its discoverer, Michel Brunet, considers it to be close to the human-chimp split on the hominin side. While critics think it is on the hominoid side of things. I bring this up because of a recent article (press release?) on PhysOrg that questions the dating of Toumai that was published in PNAS (See my post on the subject). As Hawks points out this is a pretty abysmal article (mistakenly calling cosmogenic nuclide dating carbon dating for example).

A new article in PNAS discusses the use of a new dating technique that has been used to come up with a new date for Sahelanthropus tchadensis and a specimen of Australopithecus bahrelghazali. The new method dates Sahelanthropus tchadensis to around 6.8-7.2 MYA, while the Australopithecus bahrelghazali specimen is dated to around 3.58 MYA.

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"You may not be willing to admit that you resemble an ape; if your thousandth ancestor is more like an ape than you are, you may, if you wish, call it a coincidence. But if that thousandth ancestor's forebears become progressively more simian as you trace back the geneological lines, you will have to admit that somewhere in your family tree there squats an ape." Earnest Hooten

Charles Darwin

"But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian." Charles Darwin: The Autobiography